Friday, January 23, 2009

Bruce Vs. Bono

When I went to the Obama Inauguration Concert on Sunday, the two acts I was most interesting in seeing were Bruce Springsteen and U2. I bought along two pocket digital cameras that both had movie capture modes. After the ceremonial formalities were done, Bruce took the stage with a full gospel choir to play "The Rising" his post-9/11 uplifting anthem. I grabbed my new Canon A590 and let it record.

Then near the end of the show, Bono and the boys took the stage for two numbers. I captured the "Pride (In The Name Of Love)" performance on my wife's Panasonic DMC-TZ1.

This video is just a little shakier because my hand was a lot more tired and for a little while I was trying to take still photos on my A590 with my left hand. That type of multitasking is a bad idea. The TZ1 has a slightly better zoom, but still not good enough to see what's going on on stage.

The first thing I did when I got home that night was download both cameras and put the pictures on Flickr and upload the clips to YouTube. The U2 video went up first and had a half hour head start on the Springsteen one. I gave them both very similar titles, one being "U2 At The Obama Inauguration Concert" and the other was "Springsteen Plays Obama Inauguration Concert". The two videos are of very similar quality, especially after going through the YouTube Flash filter. Amazingly, they are also only one second different in length.

The next morning I noticed an odd phenomenon. The Springsteen video had been seen over 1,000 times while the U2 clip only had about a dozen views. That gap has remained steady. As of this morning, it's Bruce-19,122 to Bono-623 and Bruce has gotten another hundred views since I started this post. And I don't even have the most popular Springsteen crowd shot. This video where Bruce is at least a barely distinguishable blur on the stage has over 40,000 views.

I have no idea what makes one video more popular than another other than just pure network effect. My little experiment in guerrilla sociological You-Tube viewing doesn't even say anything about the popularity of U2 versus Springsteen since there are clips of U2 with over 35,000 views as well.

But no matter what you think of Bruce or Bono, neither can hold a candle to Beyonce:

7 comments:

DemetriosX
said...

Can't say I really care that much for either, but I'd have to go with Bruce. He's a better songwriter (at least since he figured out that you shouldn't put more than one syllable on a beat) and there is more variety in his work. The only real change in U2's work in the last 25 years is that Bono yodels more with each passing album.

Tough call. I like Bruce's songwriting but most of his music wears on me quickly. I like much of U2 but it too gets old fast...with only a few exceptions. I saw Bruce in concert last year and it was only so-so. I haven't seen U2 so I cannot compare. No...I'm going with Aretha...cause that bow she wore was extreme! And her vocals make them sound like they're in the shower...